Third party providers can be divided into these categories:

  • Ad – display and measurement of advertisements
  • Analytics – tracking site visitor behavior
  • CDN – providers that host public shared utilities or private content of their users (bootstrapcdn.com, cdnjs.cloudflare.com, …)
  • Content – providers that facilitate publishers and host syndicated content
  • Customer Success – support and customer relationship management functionality
  • Hosting – providers that host the arbitrary content of their users
  • Marketing – sales, lead generation, and email marketing functionality
  • Social – social networks and their affiliated integrations
  • Tag Manager – provider whose sole role is to manage the inclusion of other third parties
  • Utility – code that aids the development objectives of the site owner
  • Video – providers that host the arbitrary video content of their users
  • Other – uncategorized or non-conforming activity

The three primary usage patterns of third-party resources:

  • Generate and consume data (analytics, social providers,)
  • Monetize web traffic (marketing and ad networks)
  • Simplify development (analyze user behavior, video, image, font and library hosting …)